The Dom Walsh Awards 2019

Deal of the year: The judges (ie yours truly) had an embarrassment of riches to weigh up in this category. Among the deals considered were the £1.5bn sale of Pret A Manger by Bridgepoint to JAB Holdings; C&C Group’s bold acquisition of Matthew Clark and Bibendum from the ashes of Conviviality; and Stonegate Pub Company’s estimated £50m purchase of Be At One, the cocktail bar chain. The Restaurant Group’s £559m acquisition of Wagamama was also scrutinised (no tittering at the back!) but after a heated discussion, the unanimous winner was declared to be Whitbread’s sale of Costa Coffee to Coca-Cola. OK, so the Whitbread board had to be poked in the ribs by activist shareholders to get them going, but the eye-watering £3.9bn shelled out by the American fizzy drink maker makes it a worthy winner.

CVA of the year: Not an especially sought-after award, I grant you, but there was again, sadly, a host of candidates to choose from. Most were, inevitably, rather protracted and painful processes and in some cases the fear remains that a CVA may provide only a temporary stay of execution. One that stands out as a relatively clean and straightforward (if still painful) process was that completed by Carluccio’s. New chief executive Mark Jones, who has been around the industry block a few times, looks to have speedily got the business back on the front foot and the auspices for the brand look much more promising.

IPO of the year: While there was plenty of chatter about possible flotations by the likes of Stonegate and Soho House, I can’t think of a single listing in the sector that actually got over the line. Let’s hope Loungers manages to get its proposed £250m IPO away this year under the watchful eye of its joint advisers, Peel Hunt and Liberum.

No comment award: This was a slam dunk for Gordon Ramsay who spent the entire year refusing to acknowledge the abrupt departure of Stuart Gillies as CEO of his restaurant empire. Not a solitary word, let lone an expletive, was forthcoming from the foul-mouthed Scot. Given that the two men had been friends for almost 30 years, the only conclusion one can come to is that they had the mother of all fallings-out, but with both sides keeping shtum, it may be some time before we find out the truth of the matter – if at all.

Shock of the year: No contest: the revelation of a £40m black hole at Patisserie Holdings. As recently as 2017, Luke Johnson had described the Patisserie Valerie operator as “just about my most successful venture”. Imagine the shock on his face when he was informed that the company’s very existence was in doubt and that the man he had entrusted to run its finances for the previous 12 years was suspected of being responsible for “significant, and potentially fraudulent, accounting irregularities”.

Brave soldier award: In November Tim Martin, the JD Wetherspoon boss, revealed in a trading update that he had suffered a burst appendix and intended working part-time from home “for several weeks”. He may have genuinely intended to take things easy, but anyone who knows him would have scoffed at the idea of him putting his feet up for several weeks. Theresa May’s “appalling deal” with the European Union was clearly too much for the arch-Brexiteer and free trade proponent. Sure enough, just two weeks later, he had declared his intention to visit more than 100 Wetherspoon pubs in the ensuing two months to “speak about the huge economic advantages of leaving the EU on March 29 without a deal”.

Brand of the year: Despite tough times in the casual dining market, there are still some brands that are doing well, notably Franco Manca and Giggling Squid, both of which continue to open new sites on the back of positive trading figures. Ditto Hollywood Bowl, the tenpin bowling operator, but the award for brand of the year goes to Loungers, whose Lounge café-bar brand continues to outperform the market, which should give it a decent chance of getting its proposed IPO away at a decent valuation.

Reformulation of the year: Congratulations to AG Barr for sticking to its guns and reducing the amount of sugar in Irn-Bru. Obviously it did so partly to bring Scotland’s favourite fizzy drink under the level at which it would be liable for the soft drinks tax. But it also did it because it’s the right thing to do and all credit to chief executive Roger White and his management team for refusing to be cowed by a vociferous campaign in favour of retaining the full-sugar variant. (I’m completely ambivalent – I dislike both! Sorry, Roger).

PR coup of the year: No doubts about this one. The winner by a country mile is Greggs and the recent launch of its vegan sausage roll. OK, so it made its debut in half the company’s shops in the first week of 2019, but the column inches and broadcast footage generated are such that I’m happy to present Roger Whiteside with the gong. I’m not sure I believe him when he says he and his team were taken completely by surprise by the reaction – a vegan Greggs sausage roll was always going to be a PR shoo-in. Then again, all the shops did sell out and its factory is now on extra shifts to get more product into the stores, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so sceptical. As for getting Piers Morgan to slag the product off, that was pure genius.

CEO exit of the year: Although I considered Greene King’s Rooney Anand (semi-expected) and SSP’s Kate Swann (unexpected), the prize goes to Duncan Garrood (big surprise). Last January the former Punch boss secured what looked like an excellent job as chief executive of Bill’s Restaurants, owned by Richard Caring, except that by October he was on his way again. I suggested at the time that it may not have been a coincidence that Caring had recently brought in David Campbell, the former Wagamama boss, as chief executive of The Ivy Collection and made him chairman of Bill’s. Whatever, within days Garrood had pitched up at Ten Entertainment Group as CEO. Nifty work.

Special award: Gareth Southgate is rewarded for reminding England fans that there is no better place to watch their team than in the pub. By guiding Harry Kane and the lads to the semi-final – and with some very decent football, to boot – the England manager gave the pub trade a boost just when it needed one. Stonegate, which owns the Walkabout and Sports Bar & Grill chains, had particular reason to be grateful, reporting like-for-like sales growth of 19.2% during the tournament as football fans flocked to its venues to enjoy the atmosphere.

Quote of the year: Step forward Andy Laurillard, who with his wife Pranee founded Giggling Squid. Discussing its results, he said the Thia group had suffered only one closure since its launch in 2002, shedding its site in Crawley, West Sussex, three years ago. “We realised that people in Crawley like to fight rather than eat out,” he said. I supect that Laurillard will not be visiting Crawley (the home of MCA publisher William Reed!) again any time soon.

Dominic Walsh is a business reporter at The Times covering the leisure and drinks industries